Martin Kaehler

1835-1912. German Protestant theologian. He was born near Königsberg, Prussia, and except for three years at Bonn (1864-67) his entire academic career from 1860 to his death was spent at the University of Halle. He was strongly influenced in his theological development by Rothe, Tholuck, Müller, Beck, and von Hofmann. Though his lectures on Protestant theology, the Geschichte der protestantischen Dogmatik im 19. Jahrhundert, were published posthumously (1962), Kaehler was best known for his penetrating study, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche biblische Christus (1892). In this book he opposed the tendency of biblical scholars to drive a wedge between the historical Jesus and the proclamation of the apostles. The real Jesus is not the portrait of Jesus of Nazareth which historians are able to reconstruct, but the Christ of faith who is experienced again and again by the Christian community (“the real Christ is the preached Christ”).